It’s been a few day since I last posted - there’s been a lot going on here.

We’re wrapping up Round 2 of Small Press Idol this week. We’ve fallen back a few slots in the rankings but we should solidly remain in the top 20 that move on to Round 3. There’s still time to Vote For Us! The Polls don’t close until Thursday Night at Midnight - you can vote “YES” to our message board once per day until then!

Screen Printed art, literally hot off the press.

Sunday found us scoping out the MCBA MicroCon Comic Book Party at the Minnesota State Fairgrounds. It was a fun event with lots of nice folks hanging out. There were many local indie creators exhibiting their wares, as well as a few Industry professionals like Doug Mankhe and Zander Cannon (Also a local gentleman). We gave away some limited edition freebie towels with a kick-ass 50 Foot Robot design print and they did not last long at all!

I’m thinking about taking the art and modifying it for a t-shirt graphic. Anybody interested in that sort of thing? Email me and let me know.

Finalized Art in Illustrator

Let’s see, what else is going on?

I finally got the first page almost competed for the “Sweatshop” Horror Anthology titled “The Nature of The Beast”. I’m going to add some texture yet and then the lettering before sending it off to the movie’s director for feedback. Our story will be 8 pages total and appear in a comic anthology promoting their film, “Sweatshop” from Odyssee Pictures.

I’ve got a new layout in the works for our site, beginning with the Hulk Vs. Bizarro pages. It’s a wordpress layout that makes updating and navigating our comics much easier. It’s just about ready for primetime, I just want to add a navigation bar under the main logo at the top. Here’s a sneak preview: LINK.

We’ve begun talks with a startup company about bringing The Adventures of DOCTOR IMMORTALIS to the small, small screen. Small as in iPhone & iPod Touch small. We feel there’s going to be a big future for comics on phones and hand-held devices as resolution and screen size improve and the cost of printed comics continue to sky rocket. Doc Immortalis is a perfect fit for this delivery format and we’re starting prep work on some short stories that we’re calling “Dime Novel Adventures”. These comics will be delivered as 90 Panel books for download straight to the iPhone through the Apple App Store. The first issue will be distributed for free! So stay tuned for that.

I’ve been trying to get caught up with my sketches that I owe our fans. I have an Iceman drawing for Corey, a Van-Art Inspired Unicorn/Barbarian/Mega-man Smurf Massacre for Jimmy, and a Drew T for Drew T. They’re all in the sketch phase, with Iceman furthest along. Should be done in the next week or so.

We’re gearing up for the Next Round of Small Press Idol, with Jason hammering out the script that he’s carrying around in his head for the past couple of weeks. Then I get a couple of weeks to slam out 3 completed, inked and lettered Grayscaled pages. Voting begins May 19th!

Thanks for all your support in Round 2. We’ll need it even more in the next phase!

M!

The LEX LUTHOR SAGA continues!
Watch Lex and Clark continue their tour of the new HvB set!

Just got some great “work in progress” panels of the newest HvB from Mike and it got me to thinking about the creative process we go through. So since it is topical, what with the contest and all, I’d like to share a little insight as to how we came up with our Associate bios.
First, the bio format.
Growing up both Mike and I were huge fans of GI Joe. We read the comics, watched the cartoon, and of course played with the toys. For those who aren’t familiar with the packaging the toys came in there was a “file card” which gave a quick personal history of the character, summarized their abilities, and listed their favored weapons/vehicals. Seems all of the Joes were a qualified expert in all NATO and Warsaw Pact arms as I recall…anyway, from there the idea mutated. As I was re-writing the bios I thought it’d be cool to have them displayed in a variety of media ranging from webpages and blogs to old classified documents. Since I needn’t worry about drawing these buggers up I, of course, thought it was a great idea. Fortunately so did Mike, and he did a goddamned awesome job on all of them…well most, the handwritten page of notes was done by me. This may be a startling revelation to anyone who has had the misfortune of reading my handwriting, but its true. The page took about four or five tries before I ended up with the final product; it still has a few errors in it, but we just decided to leave them in. (read: I wasn’t re-re-re-rewriting the bastard)
While on the subject of my poor grasp of spelling and punctuation, (se this post for proof} we’d like to extend a big time thanks to our good friend Jenny R-T for proofing our work.
Thanks again Jenny!
As a token of our appreciation we’ll be mailing her a vintage and highly collectable “No-Prize” I received after writing a letter to Stan “the man” Lee in the mid-80’s. Enjoy!
Back to the bios…Mike went way above and beyond what I had in mind for the pages. He even went so far as to come up with his own collection of seals, emblems, and even a unique system for designing sigils. All of it combined with the great character sketches really blew me away.
Sadly I cannot go into much detail about the bios themselves without giving away the story. What I can say is that most of the characters’ backrounds didn’t exist until I sat down to write them. That process took about a week during which I worked on about one character a day. Sadly, my writing process isn’t all that interesting to talk about, much like the bulk of this post… Anyway,for the most part my “process” consists of long stretches of listening to Bitches Brew while sipping scotch and staring off into space which is occasionally broken up by short bursts of scrawling in my notebook. After a few hours of this I either type and retype it up, or get mad and go to bed. There was no mention of this kind of buisness in Stephen King’s book on writing…
Well that is about it for now, keep your eyes peeled for a new HvB and keep voting!

Looks like technology has taken a huge step closer to making our VENT comic a reality!!
http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x32ma6_augmented-reality_tech
How cool is that?

Hey, kids.
What’s new with you?
Nothing? Great. I was only asking so I could talk about myself anyway.

We’re kicking around ideas for The Associate ZERO ISSUE. I’m thinking zombie….. what for it… vampires!
Our Round 2 Voting is going okay. We seem to have a hard time snagging new voters, and that FACTION team is just preternatural with their marketing skillz.

Sign up and vote if you haven’t, please.
Or don’t. If you think you can handle that kind of negative karma.

M!

First I’d like to thank everyone who has voted, and hopefully will continue voting, for the Associate over on Dimestore.
Up next we will be posting 3 sequential pages from our 12 page final product. We’re very excited, win or lose, about this project. We have some great ideas in the pipe as well as new Hulk vs Bizarro strips on deck, so stay tuned.
Also, if you are in Minnesota this month we’ll see you at the 2009 MCBA micro-con April 26th in St Paul.

Thanks to all who have voted so far…. we’re doing well so far, but we still need more help!
If you haven’t registered to vote already, please do! REGISTER
If you’ve already registered, please vote as often as you can, up to once every day until April 30th! VOTE

If you have any problems with “double posting”, just type a variation of “YES”… like “Super YES” or “YES YES” or something.

Thanks so much!!
M!

The ASSOCIATE has move on to public voting with Three “YES” votes form the judges!

Now you can have your say! Simply sign up on the DimestoreProductions.com site, and post a “YES” to your favorite’s message board. We hope your favorite is The Associate, but there are some other good entries too, so check them out. Vote as often as you can! One vote per day! Vote often!!

Link to sign up

Thanks!!!

If you have trouble:
Frequently asked questions.
1. If you signed up but didn’t get a confirmation email, send a mail to ian@dimestoreproductions.com and he will activate you.
2. You must be signed up at http://www.DimeStoreProductions.com to vote.
3. You can vote ONCE PER PROJECT PER DAY until April 30th for Round 2.
4. A Vote only counts if you post a “YES” in the forum of the project you want to vote for.
A. Go to the Round 2 link below, click on the “Click Here to
Vote for this Project” link to the right of the title(s) you
would like to vote for. Or directly to The Associate’s page!

B. Click “Post Reply” after you click on the link

C. Type “YES” in the box that appears

D. Click “Reply to Thread” which submits the vote

E. Note: If you receive an error stating duplicate post or
something similar, change the wording to “YES!!!!” or put
a comment “YES, I love this project” or something so it
realizes this is a new post, not a duplicate.

All art has been sent off for ROUND 2 of the Small Press Idol! It should be live for voting by Monday. We’ll keep you posted!
If you haven’t already, go sign up on the SPI/Dimestore Productions site to get yourself ready!

In the meantime we’ve updated our Cover Artwork and retooled our “Pitch” synopsis to better reflect how our story has evolved since Round 1.
Both can be viewed on our Associate Group page on Facebook!

Thanks for your support!
Vote early, vote often!

M & J

The Associate should be up early next week for voting!!
We’re putting the finishing touches on our ROUND 2 Model sheets and Bios for our main characters right now!

In the meantime, join our facebook group for updates, news, progress on the competition and more! LINK

More soon.
Thanks!

M!